Resident laser refractive surgery training

The Residency Review Committee Ophthalmology of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has recently established guidelines pertaining to the minimum operative requirements for training ophthalmology residents in refractive surgery. Despite being one of the most frequently performed ophthalmic surgical procedures, there is a paucity of literature on residency training in refractive surgery. Moreover, the literature indicates that only half of training programs offer surgical exposure to trainees. The purpose of this article is to review recent research on training ophthalmology residents in refractive surgery and offer an approach to incorporating laser refractive surgery curriculum in residency education.

Kwon et al. performed a national survey to evaluate current trends in resident laser in-situ keratomileusis (LASIK) training in the USA. The result shows that 54% of respondents had resident-performed LASIK surgery with 9.1% of surveyed programs not offering any LASIK experience. In addition, residents in the study performed a mean of 4.4 LASIK surgeries (range 1-10) during residency training starting during the second year.

The data emerging from the survey show that refractive surgery experience is fundamental to the education of the ophthalmology resident. Although the demand for refractive surgery continues to gain pace with millions of such procedures performed worldwide, only a little over half of ophthalmology residency programs offer residents the opportunity to gain surgical experience. With the current mandate, programs must now look for strategies to provide laser refractive surgical experience to residents.